Kate Kolbrener

My mother taught me to see rainbows. Even in her nineties—painting, publishing poetry, living with wonder—she showed me that creativity isn’t indulgence; it’s oxygen. She taught me that it’s never too late to become who you’ve always been. I come from a family of creatives who make meaning from the world around them. My husband and I met in art school at the University of Michigan, where I earned my BFA in metalsmithing and graphic design. Life expanded from there—raising sons, leading teams, building businesses, tending to family. Through every season, art was aways knocking. Creating in windowless basements, at kitchen tables, I made art in the margins—quietly, persistently—long before I claimed the identity “artist.” When my mother passed away recently at nearly 98, something shifted. Her loss cracked me wide open. Now, after decades in marketing, I find myself navigating an undeniable pull toward what’s essential. I paint from that intersection of loss and becoming, finally answering the question that won’t let me go: If not now, when? My work explores the contradictions of being human—especially of being a woman in this moment. It lives in the space between memory and transformation, where beauty and decay, order and chaos, stillness and motion coexist. I find meaning in what’s small, raw and imperfect, in what’s breaking down or breaking open. I approach painting as a process of discovery—layering, scraping, revealing, and rebuilding. Sometimes I construct; sometimes I undo. The work evolves through intuition and responsiveness, as shapes emerge, persist, or disappear. I follow what feels alive. Each painting becomes an act of excavation and renewal, a way of unearthing what endures beneath the surface. I’m drawn to traces and remnants—the visual evidence of time, touch, and becoming. Ultimately, I create to stay connected to that pulse of aliveness beneath it all: to remind myself, and others, that transformation is rarely tidy, but always true.